If Te Pāti Māori can hīkoi for Te Tiriti
Why not for murdered tamariki?
I recently made the decision to change my banner on X. I wanted to send a clear and confronting message that speaks to an issue too often ignored in this country:
Kati Te Kohuru Tamariki – Stop Murdering Children.
For a long time now, I’ve been vocal about the violence inflicted on children here in New Zealand, especially tamariki Māori. I’ve posted, shared, and spoken out when I’ve seen injustice or cruelty. This time, it made me stop and really think about my own actions. What am I actually doing to try and make a difference? How am I contributing to meaningful change, beyond words on a screen?
That’s why I chose to change my banner on X. It’s a small gesture, sure, but one that uses visual messaging to cut through the noise. I’ve used the Toitū Te Tiriti branding because it’s bold, clean, and instantly recognisable. The branding has become iconic across the country, and I thought that by aligning this message with something so strongly associated with Māori resistance and identity, it might hit home a little harder. Maybe people will stop scrolling for a moment. Maybe they’ll feel something. Maybe they’ll act.
We have a serious and persistent problem in this country when it comes to child abuse and child homicides. The statistics alone are horrifying, but behind every number is a real child, a real story, and a real family left devastated. Even worse is the silence that often follows. Time and time again, police are met with walls of silence from whānau. There is a tragic pattern of people protecting the perpetrator rather than standing up for the innocent child who has been hurt or killed. That silence is part of the problem. It protects violence. It allows it to continue.
As the years pass, unless something changes, we will see more cases like Baby Ru. More children will be murdered. More families will refuse to talk. More people will pretend they don’t know what happened. In some cases, like Baby Ru’s, police have a clear idea of what took place. But without evidence, and with people deliberately covering up what they know, there is no justice. Evidence gets destroyed. People blame one another. The truth gets buried, just like the child.
The design of my banner is based on the visual identity created by Te Pāti Māori’s Toitū Te Tiriti initiative. Whether you see it as a political movement or a branding campaign, there’s no denying its impact. It’s simple, striking, and smart. Te Pāti Māori made a brilliant move by embedding that message into our visual landscape. But despite that success, we have yet to see the same energy, the same passion, or the same call to action when it comes to the abuse and murder of our children. That’s a silence we should all be questioning.
So I’m putting this banner out there. Use it if you want. Add it to your X profile. Share it on other platforms. Send it to people. Post it in your community. We can start something together - something that spreads a message so clear and so necessary that it can’t be ignored anymore.
As you say, Matua, it's a business, and as such, there will be silence from the Brown Clown Industrial Complex unless they can monetise it.
Never forget this is the same cohort of grifters and traitors who profited from the Safe & Effective, whined about 'vaccine equity' as discrimination, turned marae into administration centres and had 'our people' trained to administer the magic potion into their own.
Well said. This is where the Iwi organisations need to step up and play a far more significant role. For too long, they have pursued Treaty claims while ignoring the underclass of their people. That needs to end. My Kai Tahu children, like my Kai Tahu wife, will not be statistics in that hall of shame, but it will not be because of their Iwi, but because they have two loving parents who put them above all else. For those children who are not fortunate enough to grow up in such an environment, their Hapu and Iwi, their literal extended family, should be there to care for them in every way, and not just for the financial benefits it brings them.
Being Maori is not just about Kapa Haka, learning Te Reo, and yearning nostalgically for a magical past that never existed. It is about realising that using the incredible support network that exists within the marae/hapu/iwi structure to support and raise up each and every Maori person within a system that has enriched people of all cultures the world over, namely, liberty, is the only way to make being Maori mean anything more than simply just another DNA marker on a chart.
I am fascinated by the various cultures that I descend from, but living here in NZ I have no contact with any of them in any real sense. Maori are fortunate enough to have that, and they should make the most of it, instead of playing the victim while ignoring the problem that exists with Maoridom of harming the most vulnerable within their society. It is time Iwi leadership did their job and led, rather than acted as if they were powerless.